I was thinking about myself today. Well, I think about myself pretty much all the time. I think I have a weird personality. I've always embraced my weirdness, but there's something...strange about me, I think.
Honestly, from all my thoughts and actions, I know I'm passionate about some things, but I think there are very few things I am balls-to-the-wall passionate about.
Everything else in life is on a pretty even keel. My personality is fairly even-- sure, I get feisty sometimes, and I pop off with the most random, sometimes uncomfortable comments that makes my family blush from embarrassment and brief desire of disownment; however, I feel very in-between things. I don't feel like I really OWN opinions sometimes. In politics, in religion, in school, I am mostly a go-betweener. I understand points of view, and sometimes I whole-heartedly agree/disagree. But mostly, I don't make my life one in which I develop a ton of theories to support a ton of opinions.
I also think my eating habits are strange. I eat healthy--a lot of veggies and fruit, not a whole lot of meat. Then again, I eat like a 5-year old on a sugar high. I love ice cream, candy resembling the likes of straight-up sugar cane, and my obsessive baking skills generally leave me in the kitchen a couple nights a week baking cookies or brownies or a new pie recipe.
But when I have those cravings, watch out. Example: I ate heated cinnamon apple sauce for like 4 days straight. I had meals, too, but they were small. I only wanted warm apple sauce. Example: I bought a bag of Valentine's candy (which I'm still kicking myself for, as an avid hater of Valentine's Day. Hey! I have an opinion! Yessss.) I have eaten a lot of that candy. Waaayyyy too much. Example: My Nature's Own 9-Grain Honey Oat Bread is already gone after a week, and I'm starting on the new bag.
Here's a different example: I just figured the piano chords to Patti Griffin's "Top of the World," which are easy, I know, but I can't play the guitar. So that is all I've been singing. All I've been playing, really.
The point of this is that I'll get on a Coffee-Ice-Cream kick or a peanut-butter-is-boss kick (wait, that's pretty much permanent,) or a Disney movie kick. Usually, these things are cyclical and always come back; I actually appreciate the fact that they are just phases of my year or month or week, even, because if these obsessions were permanent, I would be extremely large with rotten teeth and my roommates would hate me for my constant attention to the keyboard.
But I feel that most of my passions are only momentary. I never feel strongly about anything for an extended period of time, with the exception of writing, movies in general, music in general, William Wordsworth, and peanut butter.

Le Groc-er-y

I love grocery-shopping. I try to never go while hungry, or else I'd strip the candy, cereal, and ice cream aisles to bareness, but I love the organized rows of colorful boxes, bags, and even the little arrangements of dinnerware, fresh bakings, and tempting donuts in the glass case of sweet fatness.
But my favorite section--my absolute DREAM WORLD in a grocery store is the vegetable aisle/corner/patch (tehe, get it? Vegetable patch!)
I think I like this section because it doesn't look as strategic. Sure, the happy-looking peppers are grouped together, the lettuce is near the cauliflower, the carrots and zucchini and squash look like a happy family, and the leeks just look cool.
But I love how free the veggies look. Technically, yes, I understand they aren't free. They're ripe for the pickin' to be stir-fried and dipped with globs of Ranch dressing (I shudder.) But I love the smelly freshness of the veggie aisle. You can feel the cool mist with each inhale, you feel your eyesight instantly inhance with the bright vegetably color.
Nearby, the large bins of apples, oranges, pears, kiwi are tumbling as if they come straight from the tree into an old, brittle wicker basket.
How can this not make me happy? I love veggies and I love fruit--I love the variations of everything. Peppers (I'm obsessed with peppers,) onions...I just bought carrot chips for the first time...they are much easier to eat and they look cute, too :) The cabbage and lettuce look so cozy, the tomatoes and potatoes look like home, and the fresh asparagus looks much more attractive in raw, uncooked form. (And smells better, too.)
So I think I've found my new happy place.
Plus, now I have ingredients to make spaghetti...Belgian style. Yay!

Epiphany #241 (?)

I realized a major reason why I hate KY so much.
You know how there is one parent you really clash with because you're so similar, as in you have the same temper or the same impatience or the same ignorance?
That is Kentucky and me.
One day, KY weather is somber and glazed over with gray overcast. I love those days.
Today was one of those days--snow flurries, snow chunks, snow pellets... hazy day, a bit cold, but not too crisp to handle. In fact, I walked to class with the ground covered-- my deck...all white, my hair was embedded in little soft flakes. 30 minutes later I walk back to my apartment with the sun-a-smilin' and nothing on the ground but sludgy earth.
WTF?
KY is bipolar, much like my crazy back-and-forth personality.
In January, it could be 20 degrees outside one day and 50 the next.

Oh, epiphanies. You know, I think epiphanies are sometimes useless. They make me undestand more things about myself/life in general, but they don't necessarily help any situation. Example: today I learned why I dislike KY. It doesn't change anything. I still want to leave.
But it gives me something to write about, so...

Tingly Nose

So either I've contracted some terrible Belgian disease or I have a miserable cold. Intense head pressure around the temples and forehead, snot running down my face mid-sleep, piles of snot rags littering the living room table, my bedstand, the floor beneath my trash can, IN my trash can...
And I hate that non-stop tingly feeling in the bridge of my nose. The one where I always feel like I'll sneeze.
And I keep sneezing. I feel like my fingertips are permanently slicked with snot and lotiony tissue residue.
Uggghhhhh.

Teeth

(While listening to Teeth by Lisa Hannigan. If you really want to get in a mood for this post, maybe you should listen to it.) :)

On New Year's Eve, I wrote this entry.

I'm searching myself again. Analyzing. Mirror-checking. Who am I? Am I still the same from what I was raised?
No.
That's why my parents are freaking out. I'm not their Scottsville-raised, blunt-mouthed Baptist anymore.
I'm changing, everyone in my life knows that. But there are still things from my childhood, from life in general that are buried and still try to surface. Things that, for some reason, I keep from my parents and from a lot of people in my life. It's not really an ashamed thing, but a privacy thing, I guess.

I still wake up sometimes in a panic. When I was little, I'd wake up in a panic, either trying to pull out my teeth or crush them in a painfully-clenched bite.
I try to destroy my mouth and I don't know why.
Now, I wake up a lot scratching and clawing at my skin like there are bugs wriggling inside me. I scrape my face, my legs, my back, my hands, my neck. I have to wear my hair in a ponytail now. The hair makes the itching much worse.

I think Mom suspicions my sexual abuse from my new involvement in Hope Harbor. But I can't tell her. A lot of me is afraid it would be way too much information in one year. I became a democrat, voted for Obama, went to Europe, left the church AND now I tell her I've been abused? Don't think so. It seems a bit overkill and I'm better now, thank you. Or at least I can deal with it now.

It's odd, isn't it? This entry is a bit of a confessional. I've wondered if I would ever mention sexual abuse in my blog, and it's not just clawing to get itself out... but I feel placid right now, so I think it would be nice to air out a little emotional baggage I have.
I think I'm scared of the parental reaction. Sexual abuse is a big deal, and luckily, I endured a very mild form of it. Part of me is afraid of the tears--I've experienced too many of them. And the questions. Part of me is even afraid that I won't be believed. It's heinous, I know, to fear your parents disbelief when you tell them something so drastic.
But this whole year has been drastic and way too complicated.

Sometimes I consider pulling my teeth. It wouldn't solve anything...I might look a tad goofy, but it would seem to relieve some pressure. Sometimes I imagine my teeth as sharpened bones lodged into my head...I dream about it, and I suppose that's why I want them crushed to powdery whiteness or replaced with a bloody, gaping hole.

Things in America I've learned to appreciate:

Milk
Toilets
Trash cans every 10 feet, no matter where you are...
big kitchens
yards


Things in America I plan on rejecting (if not already):

chocolate
cars (and all things that go with cars...gasoline, perhaps)
fast food
the radio
the lack of linguistic education
healthcare *sigh*

the state of my room

So I'm packing for my crazy trip to Belgium. I say crazy because, well, most people think I'm crazy. I think I'm a little crazy. And the state of my room is a bit crazy, too. I have my ginormous suitcase on the floor, packed full of clothes only...I'll have to do some revision packing tomorrow. I have books and jeans and purses and shoes strewn all over my floor, my underwear drawer is completely open with my straightener (turned off) in the midst of socks and panties, and I have a laundry basket full of clean sweats that won't fit in my closet or chest of drawers.

I have one small yellow mini-poster that has a picture of a cartoon guy with a head 3times the size of his body wearing nothing but briefs. The sign says, "Sometimes I like to run around in my underroos for no reason." It's taped on the painted-white brick wall. To the left is a full length mirror, hanging slightly crooked, next to the door. To the left of that is my out-house closet, which is built into the room, not into the wall, with the door wide open. A new purple dress (Old Navy Clearance!) and my robe is hanging on the outside from a couple of protruding nails. Shoes are spilling out of the closet against the grass-green, nearly-shag carpet that looks as if it's from the 70s.

My TV in front of the wall to the left of the closet, which is playing the first Harry Potter, and stacks of more Harry Potter movies are on top of my DVD player. A bouquet of fake pink daisies from a wedding I bridesmaided this summer is next to the movies, and behind the TV is a much-used bowling pin I won in Ichtegem when I scored the highest for bowling...it has tons of signatures from my favorite Belgians.

My bookshelf is next...completely full with other books stacking on top of the crowded books. A couple of pics sit on top.

Above my computer desk is Radiohead's OK Computer poster. On my desk is lotion, nail polish remover, hand sanitizer, a lamp, a fan, innumerable CDs, magazines, certificates, a pink and white-striped beanie, two bath towels dangling from the chair, mail, bank statements, tangled ear bud cords, an electrical outlet converter, a jewelry bag, receipts...yada yada yada... And finally, above my enormously awesome queen-sized bed with a silky olive-green comforter is a black and white poster of Audrey Hepburn.

My room is super messy.
In fact, the only clean, trim part of the room is in the two large windows, where my mother sewed curtains of an interesting shade of brown to match some of the stitching in my comforter. She likes to match.

I cringe at the fact that before I leave, I'll need to make it somewhat organized, but I feel very comfortable and at-home in a messy room.